Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

Reference Receiver Based Digital Self-Interference Cancellation in MIMO Full-Duplex Transceivers

In this paper we propose and analyze a novel self-interference cancellation structure for in-band MIMO full-duplex transceivers. The proposed structure utilizes reference receiver chains to obtain reference signals for digital self-interference cancellation, which means that all the transmitter-induced nonidealities will be included in the digital cancellation signal. To the best of our knowledge, this type of a structure has not been discussed before in the context of full-duplex transceivers. First, we will analyze the overall achievable performance of the proposed cancellation scheme, while also providing some insight into the possible bottlenecks. We also provide a detailed formulation of the actual cancellation procedure, and perform an analysis into the effect of the received signal of interest on self-interference coupling channel estimation. The achieved performance of the proposed reference receiver based digital cancellation procedure is then assessed and verified with full waveform simulations. The analysis and waveform simulation results show that under practical transmitter RF/analog impairment levels, the proposed reference receiver based cancellation architecture can provide substantially better self-interference suppression than any existing solution, despite deploying only low-complexity linear digital processing.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be presented in the 2014 IEEE Broadband Wireless Access Worksho